( Read more... )

Oi! Are you French?! Are you French?! No? Well, then, why did you bite your brother?!

But Aron's book is a sane antidote for those Manichaeans who still see Russia not as a real country inhabited by real people trying to cope with dauntingly real problems, but as a kind of phantasmagoria haunted by murderous bandits and drink-sodden peasants dreaming of empire.
-- Sir Rodric Braithwaite

"There are aspects of my celebrity I don't like, but it would be hypocritical to complain. I can generally ignore it by going off to think in 11 dimensions."
-- Stephen Hawking

"Somebody once said to me 'What have dogs got to do with jazz?' I said, 'They ARE jazz!"
-- Bruce Weber

Any more good folk/folkifiable songs?

I'm struggling with this. What's a good non-folk, or even folk, song that could credibly be sung by a woman at a folk group? Preferably something that's on youtube, in a form that someone musical (not me) could readily rearrange for the Bleecker Street audience. If it sounds too unfolky in its current form, you have to record your own treatment. Do ( Read more... )

Well, Colm, we'll have to leave you in the bed of your abusive priest for just a couple of minutes while we listen to Coldplay, with Speed of Sound. Mellow!
-- Matthew Bannister, BBC Radio 2

Say this fast in a Nirnish accent: Betty Boo, Betty Boo now doing the do.

Maybe I'll move over to twitter. I find 140 characters once a week manageable.

Anyway, my current plan for personal progress is: lots of people die of swine flu; I don't die of swine flu; I take up the slack of the now dead.